Baker's Magic (Middle-grade Novels) Read online

  Once or twice Master Bouts tried to joke with her, but she only replied in mumbles. She refused to look through the ancient cookbook with him, to practice her reading and marvel over the unfamiliar ingredients as had become their habit while the dough rose. She even refused her daily bun. She was short with the customers and turned away from Wil with a frown when he came in for his bread and bun. Master Bouts handed him a cookie to make up for Bee’s rudeness.

  “What’s the matter with our Bertgarda?” Wil asked. Bee ignored him.

  “Wrong side of the bed?” Master Bouts offered. “We all have our bad days.”

  Wil took a bite of the cookie. “Did you leave out the sugar?” he asked Bee. “This tastes a bit off.”

  “It’s you who’s off!” Bee flared. “My cookies are fine. Same as ever. Go on home and stop bothering me.”

  “So I shall,” Wil said, surprised. “Sorry, Mistress Baltelda. I didn’t mean to doubt your delicacies.” But before he could leave, three more customers, then four, then five, came in to complain.

  “I don’t know what it is, exactly. I believe the custard is sour,” one said, her voice trembling, holding out a raspberry tart.

  “The bread tastes bitter,” another reported, head hanging forlornly.

  “The icing is acrid,” said a third, sniffling and dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief. Master Bouts took back the goods, breaking off the edge of the tart to taste it himself. A look passed over his face that Bee couldn’t name, and he pursed his lips. She felt a prickle of worry. Was it happening again—had her baking gone bad?

  Master Bouts, Bee, and Wil went back into the kitchen and tested all the ingredients. But the sugar and honey were sweet; the flour had no weevils. The eggs were fresh and the berries ripe.

  “I’ll give you another for free tomorrow,” Master Bouts promised each patron. “Come back in the morning.” They sighed and grumbled but agreed.

  Master Bouts closed the shop early and then invited Wil to join them in the kitchen for tea and supper.

  “They were right,” Master Bouts said, as the kettle heated. “I tried the cookies, and that raspberry tart … something was wrong.”

  “I did everything the same,” Bee insisted. “It wasn’t me.”

  Master Bouts made the tea, and they sat. “I have an idea,” the baker said. “But it’s a crazy one, that it is.”

  “What?” Bee bent her head over the teacup, letting the steam warm her face.

  “How have you been feeling, working here? Have you been happy?”

  “Yes,” Bee said. Even on this dark day, she knew she had been happy since she’d started at the bakery.

  “And today, how have you felt? Are you happy?”

  “No.” Bee didn’t want to say more, and Master Bouts didn’t ask why.

  “How would you describe how you feel today, my girl?”

  Bee thought about it. “Bad,” she said at last. “Melancholy. Sour.” That was how she always felt on the anniversary—and, she realized, on many of the days she’d spent in her foster home.

  “Sour,” Master Bouts repeated. “Like the custard.”

  Bee raised her head, but she was silent.

  “Bitter, like the bread,” he said. “Off, like the cookies.”

  Wil whistled through his teeth, and Bee stared at the baker. “What are you saying?” she demanded.

  Master Bouts ran his hands through his white curls, and they stood up like a crown around his head. “It’s this: When you were happy, the people who ate what you baked were happy. When you felt bad, the people who ate what you baked felt the same way. I think that you bake what you feel into your food. I think your pastries make people feel the way you do.”

  “That is crazy!” Bee exclaimed. “That’s more than crazy—that’s … magic. Only the mages have magic. I’m no mage.”

  “Well, there are the hedge wizards and hedge witches,” Wil offered. “They have some magic.”

  “Hedge wizards and witches are all daft,” Bee said. “I’m not like that.”

  “And I’ve heard tales,” Master Bouts said. “There was a cobbler a while back—people claimed that his boots made them able to walk for miles and miles without feeling it. And a cooper … Master Crempe. Remember him, Wil?”

  Wil nodded. “I heard any wine from his barrels tasted better than the palace’s own vintage.”

  “Those are just stories,” Bee retorted. “I’ve never done any kind of magic at all.”

  Master Bouts puffed out his round cheeks. “Well, baking has its own magic. Maybe you just … emphasize that magic a little.”

  “You know,” Wil said, “when I ate that cookie, it didn’t really taste odd. In fact, I’m not sure it tasted different at all, exactly. But I felt different tasting it.”

  “It was the same when I tried the tart,” Master Bouts agreed. “All of a sudden, I could only think of my wife, and of Frits. For a minute I was afraid I’d start weeping. I thought it was just me, or maybe that your sadness was making me sad, Bee. But now I think it’s the pastry itself.”

  Bee slapped her hands on the table, making the teacups jump. “That’s ridiculous! It cannot be true. I don’t believe it.” She tried not to think of the times she’d baked for her foster family in Boomkin, and their odd reactions.

  “We’ll just have to test it,” Master Bouts said. “You should bake something when you feel a certain way. Then we’ll eat it and see if we feel the same.”

  “Fine,” Bee snapped. “I feel very annoyed right about now. I’ll make some cookies—they’re fastest.”

  While Master Bouts and Wil watched from a safe distance, Bee quickly mixed ingredients into a batter, mumbling under her breath and banging cookie sheets in frustration. She dropped chunks of dough onto a sheet, slid them into the oven, and slammed the door shut. They sat quietly, drinking tea, for the twelve minutes that the cookies baked. No one said a word while they waited for Bee’s temper to cool and for the cookies to be done. When Bee pulled them out, they were nicely browned around the edges and smelled delicious.

  Wil reached for one, juggling it from hand to hand when it burned his fingers. “Ouch, ouch, ouch,” he said. Pieces of cookie dropped onto the table. He took a big bite, huffing when the hot dough touched his tongue. He chewed, swallowed. They waited.

  “Oh,” he said after a minute.

  “What?” Bee asked. She felt much better after working her annoyance away.

  “I should go,” Wil said, rising from the table. “I don’t want to say anything I don’t mean.”

  “Wait!” Bee jumped up to stand in front of him. “How do you feel?”

  He glowered at her. “Don’t ask me any stupid questions. Just get out of my way.”

  Bee exchanged a wide-eyed look with Master Bouts and moved aside. Wil pushed through the kitchen door into the shop. “The cursed door’s locked!” he shouted. There was a loud thump as he kicked it.

  Master Bouts hurried into the shop to let Wil out. A moment later he was back, and he plopped down onto his chair. “Well,” he said, tapping his fingers together. “I don’t think I need to try one of your cookies.”

  “No, please don’t,” Bee begged. They didn’t speak again but sat in disbelief and wonder as the cookies, made with butter, sugar, flour, eggs, and a dollop of exasperation, slowly cooled on their tray.

  CHAPTER 4

  For the next few days, Bee tried very hard to keep her emotions under control as she worked. When she burned her finger taking a tray of cookies out of the oven, she went for a walk outside to be sure she was perfectly calm before punching down the bread dough. After Mistress de Vos insisted that Bee had given her the wrong change, she sat for a few minutes breathing deeply before she mixed up the next batch of tart crust. There were no further customer complaints about the baked goods. Both Bee and Master Bouts were greatly relieved.
/>   A week or so later, there was a commotion at the bakery door. “Stand aside, stand aside!” Bee heard someone call out. She looked up from wrapping a lingonberry tart to see a man in a very fancy uniform entering the shop, pushing patrons out of his way.

  “There’s a queue,” Bee said sternly, pointing to the line of customers.

  “I come from the palace,” the man said, ignoring her. He had a peculiar nose, upturned rather like a pig. Bee suppressed the desire to snort at him.

  “Well, I don’t care if you’ve dropped in from the heavens,” she retorted. “You’ll have to wait your turn.”

  Master Bouts came through the swinging door from the kitchen just then. “No, no, Bee,” he said. “This is Master van Campen, the palace butler. What can I do for you, sir?”

  “Master Joris has heard your tarts are not without merit, and he would like you to deliver some tomorrow for him to try. One raspberry, one lingonberry, if you please.” It was clear from the butler’s expression that the if you please was no more than a courtesy. Whether they pleased or not, the tarts had better be delivered.

  “Yes, of course,” Master Bouts said. “I’ll send them before noon, so Master Joris can have them for his lunch if he desires.”

  The butler bowed smartly, still managing to keep his nose in the air, then turned and left the shop as abruptly as he’d entered. The customers stared after him.

  “Well!” Master Bouts rubbed his hands together, delighted. “We haven’t been asked to send pastries to the palace in a very long time. Master Joris usually gets his sweets from Caneel Street. This is an honor indeed!”

  “Will you make the tarts?” Bee asked while helping the next customer, a young mother who was eavesdropping shamelessly. The tale would ring through Zeewal by lunchtime.

  “Tarts are your specialty now. But Master Joris loves his sweets. The richer the better, I’ve heard. So we’ll put in some Bouts Buns as well, to be sure. And maybe even a cake, if I can round up the ingredients … but he’ll prefer your raspberry tart. There’s nothing better.” Master Bouts nodded proudly at her.

  Bee blushed, pleased with the praise.

  That evening, after the shop was closed and supper eaten, Bee and Master Bouts mixed up batter for the buns and made the tart crusts. Whenever Bee felt herself growing nervous, she stepped away from the kitchen. She wasn’t sure she completely believed Master Bouts’s theory, that she could bake her feelings into her pastries, but she didn’t want to risk infecting Master Joris, the mage of all Aradyn, with her anxiety.

  “Tell me about Master Joris,” she said. She’d heard of him all her life, knew he was the kingdom’s mage and responsible for the well-being of the realm. But she had never seen him or known anyone who had.

  “He’s been mage since the princess’s great-great-great grandfather sat on the throne,” Master Bouts said. “Or was it her great-great-great-great grandfather? No matter. You’d never know it—he looks no older than myself. ’Twas he who planted the tulips, you know, back when Aradyn was a happier place.” Master Bouts thumped the dough and turned it. “But he’s a very strange person, I’ve heard tell. Very reclusive. I’ve never met him myself. Collects things, I’m told. He’s the princess’s guardian, but no one ever sees them together. In fact, we very rarely see him at all, and never her.”

  “Princess Anika, is that right? She’s about my age, isn’t she?”

  “No, I believe she’s older than you, the poor thing.”

  “Poor thing?” Bee snorted. “She’s a princess.”

  “But an orphan, all alone in that palace with none but the odd Master Joris for company.”

  Bee frowned at him. She was supposed to feel sorry for an orphan—an orphan princess at that?

  Master Bouts frowned right back. “Our own difficulties shouldn’t blind us to the difficulties of others.”

  Bee turned away. “If I wanted a lesson in kindness, I—well, I wouldn’t want one,” she said, annoyed. And then she took a few deep breaths to calm herself before getting back to her baking … just in case.

  Very early Tuesday morning, when the bread was finished, Bee set to work on her raspberry tart. Master Bouts was working on the buns, humming as he rolled the dough into spirals and placed each bun on a tray. There was a knock at the front door, and Bee ran to answer it. It was Wil.

  “I heard you’ve had a summons from the palace!” he said, looking around at the busy kitchen. “Do you need a hand?”

  “Those hands?” Bee said, wrinkling her nose. “We don’t need dirt in our pastry.”

  “Clean as my grandmother’s parlor floor!” Wil promised, holding up his hands, which were indeed scrubbed clean. It being early in the day, he likely hadn’t had time to get dirty yet.

  “Well then, you can whisk the eggs.” Bee handed him a whisk and a bowl of eggs, and he started to mix energetically. “No, gently! Gently! And all in the same direction. You can hammer a piece of iron into shape, but can you stir eggs without splattering them? What an oaf!”

  Wil whisked in exaggerated slow motion, making Bee laugh. “You are a hard taskmaster, Mistress Bastianje, that you are!” She threatened him with a rolling pin, and he sped up a little, leading her in a dance around the kitchen as he dodged the rolling pin. Before long, the tart was in the oven.

  Wil had to go off to the blacksmith shop then, for his father only allowed him a short time free in the mornings and evenings. Bee worked hard to trim a basket to hold the cake Master Bouts had baked, decorated with candied violets and ribbons of colored icing. A second basket held her tarts, perfect with their centers of quivering custard and circles of plump, ripe berries. And a third basket held six Bouts Buns. Bee had had to give hers up for the day to be sure there were enough for the palace.

  “Why does he need six?” she grumbled, tying a gold bow around the three baskets, stacked one atop the other.

  “He has a legendary sweet tooth,” Master Bouts said. “He’s almost as skinny as you, my girl, but I’ve heard he can down a whole cake in one sitting.”

  “I’m sure I could too, given the chance,” Bee said.

  Master Bouts chuckled. “Perhaps you can challenge him to a duel—a cake-eating duel!” Bee loved the idea of the black-robed mage—for they all wore black, she knew—sitting across the table and stuffing layer cake into his face as fast as he could while she did the same. But cake was only for special occasions, or for the wealthy. And in Zeewal, only Master Joris was truly wealthy.

  “Now, put on your best dress,” Master Bouts instructed.

  “I only have one other dress,” Bee pointed out. The second dress had appeared sometime near the end of Bee’s first week at the bakery. Neither she nor Master Bouts had said a word about it.

  “Is it clean?”

  “Of course it is. Wait—you don’t mean that I’m to bring the pastries to Master Joris, do you?”

  “Certainly I do,” Master Bouts said, adjusting the bow Bee had tied around the baskets so it was the same length on both sides. “I must attend to the customers.”

  Bee stared at him. Did he still not trust her alone in the shop? Not trust her with the money?

  Master Bouts saw her expression. He was a man who paid attention, and he knew what she was thinking.

  “I thought it might be entertaining for you—to see the palace, maybe to meet the mage. If you’re very lucky, perhaps you can see the princess. You’ve never been there, after all, and I have—many times.”

  “You have?”

  “Well, twice,” Master Bouts amended. “And I only got as far as the outer courtyard then. I know for a fact they won’t let me inside, but perhaps they’ll let you. And if you do go in, I’m sure you will remember everything you see and tell it all to me.”

  “Oh,” Bee said, clasping her hands. “Oh, I surely will! Every last thing!”

  “But you must mind your manners and
hold your tongue,” Master Bouts warned. “You’ll be representing the bakery—and me. I don’t want to hear reports of misbehavior!”

  Bee widened her eyes at him. “Misbehave—me?”

  “I’m not joking, my girl,” Master Bouts said, but his eyes twinkled as he waved Bee off to her room to change her clothes.

  Just past noon, scrubbed and tidy, Bee started down the cobbled streets carrying the pyramid of baskets as carefully as she could. If she dropped them … well, she simply couldn’t. She made certain every step she took was steady. She took a wide berth around pedestrians, and stayed far from the horses and carts on the roadway.

  She’d explored the lanes and alleys of Zeewal over the past weeks, and she knew her way to the palace. She followed the canal until she reached the dam, and on the far side of the little lake the dam made, there it stood: a tall structure of red brick and pinkish stone. From one of the turrets, a flag showing a red tulip on a golden background snapped in the breeze. The lake water reflected the scene, so Bee could see two pink palaces — one above, one below. It didn’t look like the kind of dark, threatening place where she’d imagined the strange, reclusive mage that Master Bouts had described would live.

  Her arms were growing tired, so she started down the path that led to a small, gated entrance for foot travelers in the red brick wall. A guard stood stiffly before the iron gate, his lance upright, the epaulets on his uniform gleaming. He was very tall, and almost as wide across. He stared off into the distance as if Bee weren’t even there.

  “Who goes there?” he demanded as she approached.

  “Well—me,” Bee said. “Right here. Me.” She waved her hand up at him.

  The guard still didn’t look down. “Who are you? What business do you have at the palace?”

  “I’m Bee. The baker’s apprentice. I’m bringing special sweets for Master Joris.”

  This got the guard’s attention, though only his eyes moved. He peered down at Bee. “Why didn’t you say so? You’re late!”